Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins
Hi Leslie: I am interested in their sanitation, ease of staking and storage, cost effectiveness, ease of washing, and any other issues related to differences in both material. Thanks, Mosbah Kushad University of Illinois From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Huffman, Leslie (OMAFRA) Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 8:29 AM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins From a disease viewpoint or what exactly are you interested in? Leslie [cid:image001.gif@01CDC8A7.C95AB0F0] Leslie Huffman 519-738-1256 leslie.huff...@ontario.camailto:519-738-1256leslie.huff...@ontario.ca From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.netmailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Kushad, Mosbah M Sent: September-19-13 5:14 PM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: [apple-crop] Apple bins I am interested to read the opinion/experience of the group with plastic or wooden and collapsible or non-collapsible bins. Thanks, Mosbah Kushad, University of Illinois inline: image001.gif___ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins
Both need care, after a few years you also have to repair bins plastic soles, it's less easy compared to wood. We had some years ago, off flavor in apple (specially industrial compote). Studies determined that wood treatments were involved. Wood treatments are done very early in the wood process so it has been difficult to eradicate those treatments from the sawmill plants, sometime from abroad. If you want to get extra life for wooden bins you have to invest in sheds, which add to the cost. Insurance give the same quotation for wood or plastic for fire susceptibility, you have to give them the same distance from buildings. That was amazing for me but they told me that they have experience of big fires initiating in plastic bins. Jean Marc Jourdain Ctifl De : apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] De la part de Huffman, Leslie (OMAFRA) Envoyé : vendredi 20 septembre 2013 16:37 À : jon.cleme...@umass.edu; Apple-crop discussion list Objet : Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins I have also heard this, so extra care is needed both putting bins into storage and taking them out. I also know that several growers had to alter their bin carriers to accommodate the footprint of the plastic bins. However, most growers here are switching or have switched to plastic bins, and seem happy enough with them. I'd also like to hear other comments. Leslie [cid:image001.gif@01CEB620.86DD1E90] Leslie Huffman 519-738-1256 leslie.huff...@ontario.camailto:519-738-1256leslie.huff...@ontario.ca From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Jon Clements Sent: September-20-13 9:55 AM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins The biggest complaint I have heard about the plastic bins is they can be slippery when handling/stacking. Oh yea, and $$$ cost... :-) On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 9:43 AM, Kushad, Mosbah M kus...@illinois.edumailto:kus...@illinois.edu wrote: Hi Leslie: I am interested in their sanitation, ease of staking and storage, cost effectiveness, ease of washing, and any other issues related to differences in both material. Thanks, Mosbah Kushad University of Illinois From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.netmailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.netmailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Huffman, Leslie (OMAFRA) Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 8:29 AM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins From a disease viewpoint or what exactly are you interested in? Leslie Leslie Huffman 519-738-1256tel:519-738-1256 leslie.huff...@ontario.camailto:519-738-1256leslie.huff...@ontario.ca From: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.netmailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net [mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] On Behalf Of Kushad, Mosbah M Sent: September-19-13 5:14 PM To: Apple-crop discussion list Subject: [apple-crop] Apple bins I am interested to read the opinion/experience of the group with plastic or wooden and collapsible or non-collapsible bins. Thanks, Mosbah Kushad, University of Illinois ___ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.netmailto:apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop -- Jon Clements aka 'Mr Honeycrisp' UMass Cold Spring Orchard 393 Sabin St. Belchertown, MA 01007 413-478-7219 umassfruit.comhttp://umassfruit.com inline: image001.gif___ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins
You may well be correct, David, in your assessment of off-flavors associated with storage odors even at the grocery store level. Personally, I am never certain whether I am tasting an off-flavor from the storage or whether the wax that grocery stores require impart an off flavor. Or perhaps waxing apples seals in the off flavors? Incidentally, you can eliminate foul odors in storage rooms by paying for an ozone generator that runs throughout the storage period. These have been used in lemons storages because the low levels of ozone that they generate inhibit sporulation and secondary cycling of the Penicillium species that attack lemons. Since lemons are stored at about 55 F (as I recall), secondary spread of Penicillium in those storages is a huge issue. The folks selling ozone generators have tried for many years to transplant this technology to apple storages, but we do not have secondary spread of Penicillium in apples storages because most of the blue mold infections will not sporulate under low-oxygen conditions. Thus, ozone generators provide no benefits for decay control in apples. Nevertheless, some folks have tried the ozone generators and reported that they do make the storages smell much better because the ozone quickly oxidizes the gasses that carry the odor within storages. Thus, one could use wooden bins and still have clean air via ozonation, but if you add the cost of the ozone treatments to the other disadvantages of wooden bins, you may find that the economic balance shifts a bit more toward using plastic. Of course, if you are still using old wood-walled storages, then the wood decay odors may be coming from the building rather than from the bins, so plastic bins presumably would not resolve odor problems in old storage buildings. Finally, I should have clarified that the packer who noted much less scuffing with plastic bins was speaking specifically of McIntosh and other soft varieties. Wood bins would presumably contribute less to cullage with more indestructible cultivars such as Red Delicious. On Sep 20, 2013, at 11:46 AM, David Doud david_d...@me.commailto:david_d...@me.com wrote: I don't think that the foul odors in apple storages have any impact on fruit quality. My observations are contrary to this - I buy/evaluate grocery store apples regularly, and find that off flavor that I believe comes from nasty storages to be the most common quality deficiency. Customers are getting apples stored in cardboard in bad air, not a way to drive consumption. I find this across the spectrum of food stores, from high end to discount. I'd agree that apples lose some of the taint as they set in fresh air, but is this something we want/need/expect the consumer to do? If I were a big time marketer, I'd see an opportunity to sell high end 'clean-air certified' or somesuch fruit David On Sep 20, 2013, at 11:03 AM, David A. Rosenberger wrote: We did some work in 2000 comparing spore loads (Penicillium species, the most common of which causes blue mold) on wooden bins and plastic bins. Both sets of bins had been used for a number of seasons, and both came from the same apple storage operation. We pulled them out of their empty bin piles in July and made no attempt to sanitize them before running them through an overhead bin drencher and then evaluating spore load by dilution plating of the drencher water. Some of the bins (both wooden and plastic) still had remnants of decayed fruit stuck on the bin floors. One would assume that plastic bins, which appear relatively smooth compared to wooden bins, would harbor far less inoculum. In fact, we washed off roughly 2.2 billion Penicillium spores per bin from wooden bins and about 483 million spores per bin from the plastic bins. Thus, plastic bins may appear cleaner, but they can still harbor huge numbers of decay spores and other organisms. We also made an attempt to sanitize both kinds of bins using a quaternary ammonium sanitizer. Although we lowered spore numbers a bit with the sanitizer, we failed to really clean up either wooden or plastic bins in that trial in 2000. In retrospect, I realized that part of the failure in using the sanitizer was that our sanitizer solution was made using well water (presumably 55 F) and the contact time at that low temp was too short to get a good kill. Nevertheless, that work showed that sanitizing plastic bins is not much easier than sanitizing wooden bins. (Not all Penicillium species cause fruit decay, and we did not determine how many of the spores recovered from bins were the primary decay pathogen, P. expansum. Nevertheless, the conclusions about cleanliness of bins still holds.) One of my gripes about the plastic bins is that most of them have an open-celled grid-work of reinforcing plastic on the underside of the bin floor. This reinforcing grid adds a tremendous amount of surface area for harboring dirt and
Re: [apple-crop] Apple bins
I store apples in modified 6-gallon milk crates, and have noticed that the foul odor develops during our 5-month storage period. It is the same odor that I recall having smelled from fruit in wooden crates at Cornell's storages (Ithaca) in the 1960's. Our storage has never held wooden crates, and the walls have no exposed wood except for a few laminated posts supporting the walls. However, we use home-made wooden pallets, 2x4 douglas fir on 4x4 pressure-treated pine, to support each 10-crate unit. Use of plastic containers in itself does not eliminate the odor problem. I don't know whether they would smell bad if no wood at all were in the room. The odor does disappear with airing. David Kollas Kollas Orchard, Tolland, CT On Sep 19, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Kushad, Mosbah M kus...@illinois.edu wrote: I am interested to read the opinion/experience of the group with plastic or wooden and collapsible or non-collapsible bins. Thanks, Mosbah Kushad, University of Illinois ___ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop ___ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
